Green infrastructures and ecological corridors shape avian biodiversity in a small French city
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Green infrastructures and ecological corridors shape avian biodiversity in a small French city Erika Beaugeard 1
&
François Brischoux 1 & Frédéric Angelier 1
Accepted: 21 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In the context of increasing urbanization, preserving urban biodiversity has become a priority because biodiversity appears to be a key element when evaluating the well-being of urban residents. Recently, urban management has relied on a ‘renaturing’ strategy to improve biodiversity, but the benefits of these policies remain debated. In this study, we evaluated the effects of urban land use and green corridors on (1) urban avian biodiversity, and (2) the presence of the most common (top 70%) and least common (bottom 30%) bird species. We surveyed bird diversity at 102 sites during the Spring in a small French city, and performed a PCA on several habitat structures (e.g. roads, houses, grassy areas) to determine the level of urbanization of each site. Then, we tested with GLMMs the effects of land use (PC1), distance to the edge of the city, and distance to the corridor on bird diversity. We found a positive effect of green infrastructures on bird species richness, and this effect was reinforced by the proximity to the green corridor. Thus, bird species richness and the presence of common species were positively impacted by the presence of green areas, the proximity to the city edge and the proximity to the green corridor. The presence of the green corridor contributed significantly to the presence of rare species, which emphasizes its role in promoting avian biodiversity. Green corridors are a key element of the urban landscape because they allow less common species to colonize cities, and thus enhance urban biodiversity. Keywords Biodiversity . Bird species richness . Green infrastructures . Connectivity . Corridor . Urban planning
Introduction Humans are modifying Earth’s ecosystems at an unprecedented rate. Although urbanized areas represent only 3% of the world’s surface area (United Nations 2012), more than 50% of humans currently live in cities. Importantly, this percentage is expected to increase and it is predicted that 60% of the world’s population will live in urbanized areas in 2030 (United Nations 2016). In Europe, the urban population has already reached 70% of the total population (United Nations 2018) and improving the quality of life of urban populations is recognized as a priority of urban management policies. Contact Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-020-01062-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Erika Beaugeard [email protected] 1
Centre d’Études Biologiques de Chizé (CEBC), UMR 7372 CNRS-Université de La Rochelle, 79360 Villiers-en-Bois, France
with nature and biodiversity is essential to the wellbeing of urban residents (Aerts et al. 2018; Alberti 2015; Cox et al. 2017; Fischer et al. 2018; Puppim de Oliveira et al
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